In regards to reading texts closely and thinking critically:

Close reading and critical thinking were skills I developed throughout my UNE career as an English major, writing multiple essays in which I looked at a piece of literature and made an argument about the particular work that piece was capable of performing and and centered on a particular theme and made a claim about it. Evidence of this can be found on my ePortfolio site in the Essays section, one focusing on American Romanticism found in Young Goodman Brown and the other focusing on the motif of eyes that permeates the novel Woman at Point Zero.

In this course, much of my close ready can be seen in my ENG 334 entries. In Entry Seven, I was able to discuss O’Gorman’s work and what it is capable of doing as well as its limitations. By showing how the play In the Blood and the Scarlet Letter are similar, as claims O’Gorman, I was also able to show how they were dissimilar. My analysis of different texts can also be seen in Entry Two and Entry Five, where is talked about the critical histories and Frankenstein and The Scarlett Letter, which allowed me to view the novels through different lenses which wouldn’t have been possible without developed close reading and critical thinking skills due to apparent consideration of different viewpoints and speculation of their interpretations.

In regards to conducting research in literary and cultural studies:

I have conducted research in this class and the one that proceeds it: Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. In that class, I picked an author from the Maine Women Writer’s Collection, Carolyn Chute. Using the primary sources I gathered from her log, I was able to develop my own ideas about her different projects, namely the Second Maine Militia. From there, I viewed her work through multiple literary lenses, including formalist and cultural critical. My research led me to importance of satire in the modification of media and how Chute used satire as a tool to make her work memorable.

In this class, I conducted research on Frankenstein by utilizing the MLA Bibliography. Within the database, I found an article titled “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Guillotine, and Modern Ontological Anxiety” which discussed the dichotomies present in the work of fiction and their cultural relevancy. The essay can be found in the same section on my ePortfolio site as the two mentioned before. What is noteworthy is that I was able to name my own dichotomy I found in the novel that the author of the secondary criticism did not mention, as well as expand on her points and identified the limitations of her argument to further my own.

In regards to communicating effectively in oral and written modes:

It was through both scholarly writing and creative writing that I was able to find my literary voice. Much of my scholarly writing occupies this site, and my biggest take away from honing these skills at UNE has been organization and strategically planning my essays so that they are clear to the reader and deliver a moving argument. Much of my revision is focused on this clarity, which is shown when comparing my rough and final drafts of my Methods Midterm, again found in the essays section of this site. And in oral presentation, presenting at the Research Symposium allowed me to further my oral communication skills with my base being established in my years of doing musical theater.

However, my awareness of the audience was truly developed in my creative writing endeavors. On this site, you can see that I have written songs and short stories, both crafted with the reader or listener in mind, knowing that these forms are able to make emotional impacts on those present. It is the contrast between these two methods of writing that made me aware that while different projects cater to different groups, it is important to remember that a group will be mixed with scholars and laymen, or those hungry for fiction and those who could care less.